beauty
n.— «I had fallen victim to what is called, by its detractors, “food porn.” Its creators usually refer to it as “making beauties”—as in “Hey, Al, let’s do a beauty of those pecans.” Bob Tuschman, the Food Network’s head of programming, had described the concept when I visited him in his office, above the Chelsea Market, in Manhattan. The point is to get very close to what you are filming, so close that you can see an ingredient’s “pores” (“You should believe the dish is in your living room”), which then triggers some kind of Neanderthal reflex. “If you’re flicking from channel to channel and come upon food that has been shot in this way, you will be hardwired as a human being to stop, look, and bring it back to your cave.”» —“TV Dinner” by Bill Buford New Yorker Oct. 2, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Kelly from Butte, Montana, recalls that when a few morsels remained at the end of a meal, her grandmother would say, Make it a nice day tomorrow, meaning everyone should eat all their food. A version used by a childhood friend’s family was Make it a...
Jill from Greenville, South Carolina, wants to know why pickle automatically means “pickled cucumber,” as opposed to other pickled vegetables, such as onions and carrots. The answer has to do with prototypicality, the cultural agreement that one...